Geithner's Gotta Go

"Geithner's Gotta Go" has more than just a ring to it. It's necessary. Guy was a bad hire from the gittgo. Never mind that he mangled his own taxes, he's been an ineffective advocate his entire career. Hell, the McCain campaign let Sarah Palin go on CBS about as much as the Fed put Geithner in front of cameras. Why do you think that was?

The only thing the guy can sell is free money to Goldman Sachs.

Fatally, he was the Fed's Man on Wall Street while the Mortgages for Everyone bubble inflated. He fiddled while Rome gorged itself on highly flammable instruments. Money-center institutions - colloquially known as Too-Big-To-Fail - borrowed forty (40!) times their assets to wager on tiny market changes on his watch. Not enough markets? They invented more, some called SIVs, from which the money has since sieved out.

Perhaps Geithner was doing Washington's bidding by not at least flagging such lunacy. Congress wanted lots and lots of mortgages to go out, codifying them in the '92 Legislative Changes to the Community Reinvestment Act. This in turn inflated the government sponsored gut of all bad mortgage policy, those rocking and rolling Government Sponsored Entities themselves - Fannie and Freddie!!!!! Wheewwwwweeee!

Fan and Fred wanted anyone who could fog a mirror into a mortgage. "Into": a preposition normally, a verb when used by mortgage brokers and certain salesmen.

So what'd Wall Street do when the GSEs needed to unload trillions in mortgage credit? Securitize, a fancy word for aggregate, slice and sell. Notice the absence of moral conscience. Aggregate, Slice, Sell.

Coin operated dicks: that's how to think of bond salesmen.

Ignoring the stinking pile of flammable leverage trillions deep behind him (reading a balance sheet being among his deficits), Geithner was positioned as a White Knight to our shiny new President, whose previous executive experience consisted of editing the Harvard Law Review. (As if smarts are all it takes to lead. Track record - a.k.a. successful experience - turns out to be the only solid predictor. Ethnicity turns out to be largely irrelevant. Imagine that.)

So Rahm whispered in the President's ear that Geithner's not simply the best man, he's The Only Man to run Treasury. The. Only. Man. To Run. Our Treasury.

Geithner couldn't adequately explain the situation then, can't adequately explain it now, so ipso facto doesn't know what he's doing.

"Geithner's Gotta Go" Go, go, go.

Our Treasury holds Our Future, for goodness sakes.